As deputy coordinator for diplomacy for the Feed the Future initiative, Jonathan Shrier '85 is at the forefront of the Obama administration's comprehensive plan to fight hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. In this role, Shrier who also heads the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Food Security leads efforts to reform agricultural policy in African countries and integrate U.S. global food security policy with international institutions, he said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Feed the Future which has 20 target countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa aims to bring together agencies such as the State Department and the Agency for International Development to reduce malnutrition and increase food production in countries including Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, as well as Nicaragua, Bangladesh and Cambodia, Shrier said.
"At the State Department, we have particular strengths in working with other donors and in helping Feed the Future partner countries make progress on policy reforms that will support food security outcomes that they are moving toward," Shrier said.
Despite African nations' varying goals, Shrier is a staunch advocate of using Feed the Future to help all target countries incorporate small farmers' rural livelihoods into national policy making.
"What makes Feed the Future different is its value chain approach looking at the links feeding into and out of agricultural production," he said. "So many of our policy discussions that we have are based on the idea of ensuring that countries are removing obstacles to market linkages."
Tjada McKenna, who began as deputy coordinator for development at Feed the Future last month, said that she and Shrier occupy complementary roles. McKenna who is based at USAID oversees the implementation phase of the initiative, and works closely with Shrier to ensure the most optimal outcomes, she said.
"Diplomacy is just as important as implementation," McKenna said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Without the right enabling policy environment, development efforts are not as effective."
Shrier's role in Feed the Future reflects the growing relationship between food shortages and international security, according to Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa, and a former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia. Quinn cited the 2008 global food crisis that triggered riots in over 30 countries as an example of the strong ties between agriculture and international security.
"Officials in the U.S. government working on international issues began to turn back toward what had been the focus 40 years earlier global agriculture," Quinn said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Agricultural development was increasingly coming to be seen as an important element in how the U.S. might overcome instability."
The U.S. government's international engagement via Feed the Future goes beyond diplomacy, according to Navtej Dhillon, a senior adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury Department oversees funding for the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a multi-donor trust fund housed at the World Bank.
The United State's involvement in global food security issues is motivated in part by a desire for international political and economic stability, Dhillon said.
"Our interest lies in ensuring we have a prosperous, stable global economy," Dhillon said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Because the challenge is great, there is strong interagency coordination."
In January, Shrier will become chairman of the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative, a forum in which countries and organizations coordinate global food security priorities. Shrier said he will emphasize that agricultural development policy must be anchored by a focus on nutritional adequacy and gender equity. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been a vocal advocate for both issues, he said.
"The L'Aquila Food Security Initiative is about more than just money," Shrier said. "It's about prioritizing nutrition and the role of women."
Ertharin Cousin, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture agencies in Rome, said that Shrier's upcoming role in the L'Aquila initiative is a key example of valuable American engagement in tackling international food security.
"It is because of U.S. leadership in the multilateral community that countries have come to the table to work together to ensure we can begin to address issues of global food insecurity," Cousin said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "We work in partnership with other donor countries as well as with developing countries, and that's where we make a difference."
Shrier will also be critical in the effort to construct a multi-stakeholder approach to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, an initiative through which African governments submit agricultural development proposals based on CAADP's four pillars hunger, market access, research and land and water management, McKenna said. Through CAADP, African governments determine priorities based on their particular food security issues, McKenna said.
"We look to CAADP plans as a starting point and then within those plans decide what our finding will support," McKenna said. "When we want to make sure civil society is represented, [Shrier] can be of help in that process."
In their work with African governments, Shrier and his colleagues should endeavor to build African nations' institutional and human capacity, according to Calestous Juma, an international development professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Feed the Future should work to make African universities more relevant to food security issues facing their countries, he said.
"There is an urgent need to bring research, training and extension together under single institutions and to link them directly to farmers, especially women," Juma said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Today, many of Africa's graduates of agriculture go to grow urban-based bureaucracies instead of growing crops."
